Sunday, January 22, 2012

A little book shopping

I spent the week waiting on an Amazon book order to finish its tour of the East Coast. No biggie, really, but the package passed by the town next door and went on the Maine on a shipping error, and came back through NJ before finally reaching me. I received Glen Cook's final novel of the Dread Empire - recently rewritten after being lost/stolen - now out in hardback, A Path to Coldness of Heart.

I also threw in To The Stars - and Beyond (The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories), mainly because Charles Gramlich has a tale in it, and I loved the cover.

Today the wife gave me a hall pass and I went shopping. In addition to shoes, music and comics, I picked up some books, too. Arturo Perez-Reverte's latest (perhaps last) tale of Captain Alatriste, Pirates of the Levant. The Ramsey Campbell novelization of the Solomon Kane movie (which I still haven't seen!) Finally, I bought the Baen anthology, Mountain Magic. I have Drake's Old Nathan collection (included,) but the book includes a set of Henry Kuttner tales, too. I would have gone the e'route on that one, sometime, but for this little tidbit on the Baen E'books site;

AN APOLOGY

Unfortunately the Kuttner estate does not allow publication of electronic versions of his works. So we had to remove all of the Kuttner stories from the WebScriptions version. In their place we've added Manly Wade Wellman's John the Balladeer stories. Certainly they fit the books theme of Mountain Magic.

I guess that isn't a total surprise. I noted Saberhagen's estate seem to be handling his e'books, outside of any given publisher. Also, not surprising some Silver John tales were substituted, as I think Drake is in charge of the Wellman publishing estate, so it wouldn't be a tough sell.

(I've run into something similar with some of my vinyl blues LPs having different content on CD - not just augmented, but different...)

3 comments:

I ordered a couple of the graphic novels that are set to come out in time with the John Carter movie. Preordered them really. I'm waiting for them to be shipped. I love getting books. I know you understand that.

I think the Kuttner estate is (or at least was) represented by the same agency that represents Bradbury, who only recently allowed one of his novels to be published electronically. I hate that the estate won't let Kuttner's work be published in electronic form. That's just shortshighted. I guess the electronic Kuttner collection I saw when I searched under his name is either bootleg or public domain stories. Come to think of it, the publisher is the publisher of the collection of early Bradbury stories I bought (before I learned he doesn't allow electronic reproductions of his work).

Anyway, the Kuttner stories in the paper version of Mountain Magic are a hoot. And I think Haffner Press has acquired the rights to a fifth unpublished story in that series.